Posts by Kiwi

criminals are criminals, but a society that condones rape, of women or men, as punishment, is itself morally bankrupt.

Trust me, I do not condone rape. Not under any circumstances.

Have you ever considered that the sort of stuff this miscreant was posting on his site is tantamount to rape in many ways? For some of his victims the damage will be within the same range. I know this both as a person who has been through rape (and the ongoing effects it can have, although through my faith that has somewhat been alleviated and as someone who has spent some time helping people through having nasty stuff posted online.

I can sometimes joke about the nasty things in life. I have empathy for people who have had to endure all sorts of things (orphaned young, lost many friends, terribly failed relationships, raped - and stuff worse even than that which probably won't ever come up here). But because of who I know, who I've cried with and why - nope, I really cannot find any sympathy for this guy. He has not just selfishly contributed a lot to the nasty side of this world, but has tried to make money from other people's mistakes and misfortune.

He wanted to profit from pain. Maybe now he's going to experience more pain than he considered, only directed at him instead of coming from him.

I don't believe in Karma, but this could make a pretty convincing argument.

Given the builtin traceability of this crime, this should be an honorary Darwin Award, considering his limited opportunity for procreation in jail.

That would depend on the type of cell mate he 'receives' I guess. There may well be many attempts.

(yes, pun intended and yes, I know rape is a nasty thing (trust me I know), but still struggling to find any sympathy here).

Re: A short note by Luc Rossini

ZRD sounds familiar (however I did spend a lot of time trawling over stuff back then so may've encountered it as a result of other research), however...

I'm fairly certain (no way to check) that the domains were registered and then the servers built, nothing running (as such) initially except maybe a holding page. That said I was building my server before we came up with the business name so perhaps some test emails pretty quick after the server went live.

But in other cases, the domains weren't sending straight away. In at least a couple of cases it was some weeks before they started using the domain for email.

I do recall that some of the issues was that we were initially using Paradise, by that stage brought out from Vodafone. I believe Paradise had a low reputation (was not my choice of ISP - was a legacy issue) but that shouldn't really matter.

For a little while one server was hosted on a home-based VDSL connection because of physical cabling issues at the business premises, but that still doesn't justify blocklisting someone. The email server complied with and even exceeded the standards for the day, had not been used for spam/UCE, so why blacklist?

As I think I stated earlier, one of the issues was only listing for a year at first - I also don't see that as a reason to blacklist given that many startups are done on a very tight budget and even at $NZ50 or thereabouts for a 2-year registration (IIRC - maybe the next step was 5 years so around $120NZ - I honestly cannot fully recall this stuff now :) ) it's asking a lot of a very tight budget. We built the business with a starting budget of $1500 - that had to buy the first month on a lease, power and phone/internet connections, domain, hardware, benches, some tools, advertising... But I digress.... (I remember the tears of a dear friend when talking hosting options and I told her the cheapest suitable was $120/year, before I said "Look, I'll build the site and host it on our server - it won't be as fast as we only have a VDSL connection (no fibre at our business then) but it'll get you going". Although they used another setup for email (I think a pointer to hotmail - don't blame you for blacklisting that!) they did run into issues as well with their site being visible due to someone's blacklist. Apparently co-hosting on VDSL makes us criminals or something (at least according to LDS.. :) )

We are going back some 5 years, I've since moved into other areas, so memory of some parts of the events could be cloudy, however there still was issues (more than once) with us being blacklisted because your systems automatically assumed we were doing bad things based on rather dubious concepts of what is or isn't bad practice. You chose to punish us not because of what we had done, but because of what others on our first ISP had done, or because you simply didn't like that a server had sat on a home VDSL, or that you didn't like that we were a small business with a short registration period until we got established.

LDS claims I am probably a criminal because I wanted to run a business from a small on-premesis web and email server. He would judge me, and the many millions of business owners like me, as sending "useless, stupid, illegal, and often dangerous" emails simply because we chose to host our own servers rather than pay someone else to do it. Is that really the sort of person you are, or who you would wish to side with? From your discussion here, I would expect otherwise - I am seeing a much nicer side than the machines I was dealing with in the past.. But from the machines and issues I dealt with in the past, s/he does seem much like the sort of person you would applaud.

I want to make this world a much better place, to see people struggling less and enjoying more. I want business and trade to be as easy as possible (while I really still would like to see NZ businesses get more of the local $ rather than Ali Express and Ebay etc getting our money). I hate people being 'punished' or in other was made to suffer or struggle just because someone thinks an automatic restriction would be a good idea.

Please, revisit your bots and make sure the automation isn't going to cause anyone harm. Don't act based on what someone like me did, act on what I do. Punish me for my mistakes, not for JoeSpammer's actions. And don't punish the next guy for his mistakes. Your system cost us a hell of a lot, and made it a lot harder to start a new business up and running. You made it impossible for us to communicate with our customers by email, and we lost some we dealt with face-to-face early on because they saw that we had a reputation as being 'spammers' even though our business had only been running a few weeks. Obviously we were bad, the good people at SH would never make mistakes or judge someone based on other people's actions.

Take more care about who and why you blacklist. Don't consider a server 'bad' until it misbehaves. Watch, perhaps, but don't act. Be ready to act at a moment's notice, but not until they actually do something wrong. Sure, you'll not be able to prevent some things, but you will no longer blacklist legitimate business owners just wanting to act in a perfectly legal and maybe even honest manner.

That's why I am pissed at you and your firm. You helped make a difficult time even harder.

Re: A short note by Luc Rossini

Well, We didn't. If you give me 2 minutes of your time you'll see why:

https://twitter.com/LucRossini/status/1119715551583068161

Interesting. I try to follow your link, and Twitter responds with large letters saying "Sorry, that page doesn’t exist!"

No matter what your opinion of Spamhaus; whether we're crap, great, evil bastards or good guys; your opinion is always valid as long as it's not based on fallacy. What this Register story bases its entire opening premise on, and sets the scene for you with, is fallacy. Thanks for your time.

Posting a broken link in rebuttal does not do you many favours.

Now please... Do the world a favour.. I'll give you a couple of options. My preference is that you close up shop, sell all your hardware and give the money to the poor, then go and turn yourself in to the UN, any local police station etc, let them know you've committed a great many crimes and have cause a hell of a lot of harm to innocent people, and spend the rest of your life in jail.

Alternatively, just fix your systems so you're not causing innocent people harm. I appreciate the intent of your system, but I do not appreciate the great many hours of stress trying to get blocked businesses un-blocked, nor do I appreciate the potentially thousands of opportunities myself, my friends and my customers have missed because you lot took it upon yourselves to decide what was a good or a bad business (eg a small business just starting out on a very tight budget only registering their domain for a year and using a previously unknown server, ie their own server they just built also on a tight budget).

The hate and bitterness towards your firm from your innocent victims is well deserved. Stop doing harm. Either do your job right or stop doing it altogether.

Re: For the love of..

Nobody knows how they get their list of the world's businesses or how they know when someone is starting a new one

Oh, that's pretty easy for anyone who has any knowledge of domain registrations. Just look up the date the domain was first registered. Examples :

El Reg was registered before Aug 1996 (according to Nominet), has a current 2 year registration, and that was last updated on 13th March 2018.

Microsoft has a 7 year record expiring in 2021. They were first registered in 1991.

IBM.COM are clearly spammers, as they have 1 year from their last 'update' to the end of their registration (according to the Corporation Service Company) - a one-year registration is after all one of the metrics that SH uses. ibm.com was first registered in 1986 though, so even though they may only register for a year at a time (not a given since the 'update' could've been a change of name server or other records) they have been around a little while.

So the information is a mere 6 characers (plus domain name) away. Easy to achieve.

Re: For the love of..

If Spamhaus lists something(*) there's invariably a bloody good reason for it

Absolutely. In the case of my individual home IP addy, the reason is that I sent one email from a yahoo-hosted account to a fellow of mine who works at the local hospital ("protected" by SpamHaus) to refer a patient.

The most common one I saw (where I was directly involved) was "new business under newly registered domain". So if a business wants to use "personsname@hotmail.com" they're perfectly trustworthy and we should do business with them, but if they wish to use "person@newitbusiness.com" then we must not ever trust them as an IT business because they're obviously scammers and could not possibly be someone who wants to do things right from the outset.

Because many of the larger ISPs use scamhaus and their ilk (well, actually it was only SH who messed with legitimate businesses), our customers would not receive emails from us because we constantly wound up on their blacklists. Our emails were either in response to customer queries (so a potential customer sent us an email and we replied) or in some cases us contacting the likes of Dell to arrange to be their customers - ie our only "unsolicited" emails were legitimate business emails to potential partners who actually sought such emails anyway so they weren't "unsolicited" even though they were commercial.

So SH acted to block legitimate and perfectly legal national and international commercial communications.

One poor person I know of was blocked for such a problem as yours. They were with the NZ ISP "Spark" (then known as "Telecom") who had contracted their email out to Yahoo. Because of Yahoo's reputation with SH, sending emails between him and his wife (at home or via the home email address) or sending business emails from his home IP (ie sending to the IMAP mail server of his business (NOT with Telecom) and the server sending the email on with his originating IP in the headers) could earn his business a blacklisting.

It often took little to get blacklisted, and often for stupid or trivial things such as receiving a message from the wrong ISP or the heinous crime of starting a new business and using the business domain for email (why oh why would any person starting an IT or tech business EVER want to use their business name in emails instead of person@hotmail/citizen@gmail etc etc?).

I'd support SH if they were a lot more careful about who they blacklisted and made it quicker and easier to get people of their lists, but (unless they've changed) they act in a way that causes a lot of pain to legitimate business owners and legitimate email users while marketing themselves as being something great. I wonder how many startups failed because of scumhaus's practice of blacklisting new firms, meaning these firms could never respond to legitimate queries from potential customers?

I appreciate the lack of spam, but the human toll of their over-acting has no doubt been much higher than the value we get. It would be lovely if these people could be brought to justice. After the pain of people dealing with them, they deserve to be sharing a cell with the worst scammers and spammers out there.

The lack of evidence to support claims of "unfairness" or "arrogance" or "refusal to provide evidence" should be ample clue that the posters have been let out way past their bedtimes and mummy has given up calling them in for tea.

Spoken like a true fanboi troll.

In most jurisdictions, in a large % of criminal trials, witness testimony is enough to convict. In the vast majority of rape and sexual abuse trials witness testimony is the only evidence used to convict (he says "it was consensual" she says "it wasn't", no physical evidence since months or even years have passed). For many murder trials there is little or not physical evidence left (if the body is found years later - and in some cases the body is never found) so it may be the evidence of "I saw someone in a white toyota pick up a hitch hiker" that is the strongest evidence.

So for your "refusal to provide evidence" - here we have a number of cases of first-hand witness testimony stating that Scumhaus has harmed legitimate businesses and caused harm to innocent people. It's plenty enough to convict someone of rape so should be reasonably acceptable here.

For many we cannot give any more evidence because of corporate, security, privacy and all sorts of other things. For me, in part I simply no longer have the evidence nor even access to the machines - it was some years ago and I have moved on.

But even where the material still remains in my hands I won't give it. I know your type of troll, and whatever I was to present here you would simply claim it was faked. Scamhaus themselves could put up the materials on their website, agree with everything I say and admit we're right they did act in a terrible manner, but you would claim it was somehow made up and not real evidence.

These scum caused enough stress. Why should we open ourselves up to more abuse by 'people' (I use that as loosely as possible) like you?

Re: Self-appointed but

It's not overly surprising that the loudest whiners in the "Spamhauze blocked me" crowd have tie ins to the "alt right" and fake news generating crowd. The same mentalities tend to apply.

Wow.. First time I've been linked to "alt right" nutjobs! This is indeed a special day!

you ran your business server off a dynamic IP and complained about being blocked?M

Lots of us used static IPs and business accounts, and still got abused by these scumbags.

There is no "right" to send email

So.. I've contracted an ISP to provide a service but I have no right to expect that service to be provided?

When you pump petrol[1] into your car, do you expect petrol to come out of the pump - or would you be quite happy with acid, or molasses, or maybe urine to be flowing from the pump? After all, you have no "right" to get what you pay for.

[1] Or whatever fuel you use

Re: Well, it looks like Spamhaus whining about whois data being no longer available.

I now have very little to go on when a website starts using joes.tracking.services, and I then try to figure out who owns Joe's so that I can decide if I trust them or need to block them.

I thought the answer to that was bloody obvious. Tracking service? Cannot be trusted!

The real issue now is I no longer can use whois to tell me who to distrust from now and forever more.

Re: For the love of..

or you'll find that the whiner in question is trying to send mail from dialup/DSL enduser IPs and being smacked down by someone who refuses to accept mail from such hosts

If, as a business OR a home user, I wish to build my own mail server, who gives some self-appointed people who are in another country the right to decide whether or not MY business is allowed to perform LEGITIMATE and LEGAL functions as I wish to run them?

What gives SH the right to decide whether or not my company's functions are legitimate based solely on my choice (or otherwise) or ISP?

Not every one has 50,000 ISP's to choose from.

Re: For the love of..

If I catch someone is in my backyard checking to see if the windows and doors are locked, I'm not buying them a drink. Spamhaus can and should be allowed to do what they'd please.

Spamhaus's people should be given life sentences for messing with other people's legitimate business, preventing people from trading with each other, and causing a number of people untold grief simply because SH are abusive scum on a power trip.

Re: Spamhaus has been a problem for years

it would have been VERY helpful if Spamhaus was willing to tell me what the issue was

Oh yes, I got that too.. Mainly 'radio silence' but I also recall either something about it being a 'privacy issue' or a 'security issue' for them to let us know what it was they thought was wrong.

Security issue like.... I could fix my system and reduce their numbers a little.

Re: Spamhaus has been a problem for years

They tend not to ban without cause

It is true that they do not ban without cause.

The problem is, the 'cause' so often is "because we're scum, and we can".

Re: Spamhaus has been a problem for years

But I do know that the bad taste in my mouth about them remains, probably forever.

The same. For a long time (and maybe even still today), anyone setting up a mail service through any of the ISP's now run by Vodafone NZ would have HUGE hurdles to get off SH's blocklist. They didn't block individual IPs, they blocked entire service providers.

They are scum. A law unto themselves, and an absolute nightmare to deal with.

We especially loved it when, as a computer repair/web design/server building etc firm, SH actually challenged us as to why we would want to be running our own email server - they had us marked as spammers because of the ISP we were initially with.

Later, when we changed ISP to get around this, we were "spammers" because our IP had previously been blacklisted.

That was some time back, but it doesn't sound like they have improved much. Perhaps their victims can start taking them to court.. Set one set of self-serving scumbags onto another lot of self-service scumbags, wait for the smoke to settle and hope the courts produce some common sense for a nice change.

Re: Nice

Unfortunately, this approach needs to be tuned to a particular recognition algorithm. I'm hoping to see methods that are more general in the future.

Well.. I have this condition[1] where normal light hurts my eyes. It's quite distressing, and so I don't go outside often.

But it has been found that I can wear these special glasses that filter all but IR light, and make it so I can see IR. To make the IR more useful I wear this special headband that has a lot of IR emitting LEDs. Very bright ones, to flood the area with IR so I can see easier. Doesn't bother other people.

I have also heard about research into gait analysis. Don't know anything about that, but I do have this ankle condition that gets really painful and limits my ability to go out and about. However, these helpful shoes that have randomly filled air pockets in them really help me. That they change my gait at the same time is just purely accidental, honest!

[1] No, but I'm $ure if I a$ked my doctor$ properly, they $urely would provide me with a pre$cription or note$ or other document$ to $ay $o!

Re: Handwashing

It used to be and possibly still is standard practice among machinists to wash your hands carefully, THEN relieve yourself.

Same for many other industries. I used to handle acids on a regular basis. You can imagine how long I washed before 'anything else'. I'd put the best surgeons to shame for cleanliness!

30 Odd years ago me mum and a few of her nearest shopping companions[1] wound up in the ER, with mum getting her skull, hip and shoulders x-rayed.

Why?

Because she was following the "safety suggestion", and holding the handrail when due to some mechanical error it came to a sudden and grinding halt. Mum and the others caught out took too long to realise what was going on and let go[2]. Not sure if everyone fell or one person started and took others out. As it was the up escalator they all fell backwards, some rolling further. I'd never paid attention to the buttons at the top or bottom of many escalators, take much more notice of them now. This was at Farmers Co-Op (or Farmers Trading[3]) Department Store, New Plymouth, IIRC '85 or '86.

On at least half a dozen times since then I've seen at least one rail stopped on an escalator or travelator.

Oh. No breakages that I recall, not that I cared for anyone else. Just pissed I had already been having to spend a day away from my favourite things, which was delayed since I couldn't even enjoy the delights of the 'big smoke' let alone what I would normally have been doing.

[1] IIRC none of them knew us, just people who were on the same machine at the same time.

[2] IE they didn't. (didn't let go)

[3] Farmers Co-Op is long closed. Farmers Trading is now just "Farmers". Both could exist in the same town and usually sell the same sort of stuff to a degree, however FC was closer to a 'big box' type place whilst FT focused more on clothing/fashion/smelly stuff. FC also had great agriculture stuff in there and some incredibly knowledgeable staff when it came to growing things. Gone but far from forgotten (at least from people who miss having real service and talent around!)

--> Icon coz closest we have to broken bones.

Re: Canada

Still the best country in the world in my opinion

It would be if you built a decent wall on your southern border.

Re: Other escalator laws

Or a hell or a lot of padding?

Re: "Please, pardon us as it looks we don't know we're doing what we actually do"

How about $100 per contact ? - seems fair...

$500 + a baseball bat/contact.

$50 goes to the person who gave over their email address allowing the slurping of the contacts.

$450 and the bat goes to each of the contacts.

I'll leave it up to your imagination as to what to do with said bat.

Re: Floppy vs stiffy

I wish I had thought to tell our female clients that the new 3.5 disks were called stiffy's at the time.

TBH.. Most guys I know would never want to admit they have a 3/5" stiffie..

Re: More urban myths busted

so he took out his red biro and underlined them neatly on the screen.

I used to do that often. Red (or any colour) felt-tip worked better though. Easily removed with a damp[1] rag. Used to do all sorts of marking and other work back in the early days when getting an overlay on screen took more CPU power than the machine had. Last done a few years back for getting a screenshot of something exactly where/how I wanted it. Temporary alignment marks on screen to be sure I got orientation and size correct :)

(I never bothered with a screen protector, straight onto the glass - easy to clean if done right as well)

[1] Dampened with your choice of fluid

Re: Well if the US ships want the Chinese to keep out of the way

I've seen disks attached to the fridge via fridge magnets, seen holes punched in them to put them in a ring binder, left sitting next to heaters and on windowsills in full sun.

You probably won't believe what I've seen when a user has been told they need to "use a clean disk".

Re: FYI

helping the homeless and alcoholics, stop hating Catholics, and enjoying themselves a bit more.

Aside from the 'hating catholics' bit, that is exactly what 'Christians' should be doing. The Bible in both testaments is very clear on NOT oppressing anyone, welcoming foreigners, helping people out (even foreigners) and so on. If your enemie's ox was to fall, you were doing wrong by NOT helping to get it back up again. Helping those in need was an absolute requirement under both the Hebrew laws and the things expected of the early Christians. Many of the festivals Israel observed (perhaps the majority) had a significant component relating to feeding the poor.

As to hating... If you act with hate towards anyone, you have no part in Christ. Try again tomorrow, when you've put your hate aside. If you refuse to forgive anyone, you have no reason to expect the Saviour to forgive you (there is a difference between refusing to forgive and wishing to forgive but having a hard time doing so).

Too often I have encountered people who are 'opposed' to Jesus who model his teachings very well, while also finding people who claim to follow Jesus closely yet fail to model Him in even the smallest ways.

Re: Southern Baptists and souls

They are incorrect in thinking that they have one or in maintaining that souls exist.

Incorrect.

Just because you do not know or understand what a 'soul' is, does not mean it does not exist. The very fact that you are communicating shows that you have a soul, unless you're another AMfM-type AI

Re: I.Geller

Do you remember your first car? Its little quirks, its failings as it got old. It indicates when it's hungry or it's unwell. Does it make a happy noise, a serious one or an angry one? Does a car have a soul?

I've ridden more than a few very temperamental bikes in my time.

Pretty sure my ex-Fiance has actually died and is inhabiting some of them!

(And yes, more than one has felt "off" long before any detectable symptoms of an impending mechanical (or electrical or carb) failure has occurred - nothing different in the handling, power and braking responses normal, nothing different in the noise, all gauges/lights as they should be, temperatures all right, yet something just doesn't feel right.....)